


what is justice?

by wxlverina



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 07:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15335406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wxlverina/pseuds/wxlverina
Summary: Elektra's back from the dead, but not as herself. Matt's back and he's growing impatient.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to my girl Ess for being my beta! O' mysterious Beta of the night, we are grateful for you!

MATTHEW

It has been eight months and I still have so many questions.

I don’t know who pulled me out from the rubble. I don’t know why I woke up bandaged and comfortable, as if my world hadn’t imploded.

I don’t know if Elektra is alive or if she died in my arms again.

I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I’m trying to be content with that. At some point a lawyer can’t continue asking questions.

But despite what Foggy and Stick and the Defenders wanted me to be, I’m human.

* * *

 

ELEKTRA

I emerged from the darkness with a burst of breath, like breaking through the surface of ocean water. The air does not expand my lungs immediately. Instead, it splinters through my body. Feeling returns with an explosion from my ribcage to every other inch of me. It’s searingly painful at first, then it numbs.

Consciousness awakens next. It’s groggy, clearing the confusion adorning my skull like cobwebs. The first thought that enters my mind proves that even in death, I am not separated from it. Him.

_Matthew._


	2. Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elektra wasn't exactly getting beauty sleep

**ELEKTRA**

Death and Elektra have become acquaintances. Death was unmalleable, and she knew what to expect from it. It wasn’t a resolution, but a detour within the grand scheme of her plans. She grew to accept it. 

The metaphysical energy freed from her cage of skin pulled through galaxies and light years. She delved deeper into numbingly dark folds without protest. Her essence felt expectant, because of an inexplicable bound back to earth. For existence had a habit of drawing her in and spitting her back into life, her life-force slamming into her body as if discovering gravity after a great tumble through space.

Atop wet pavement, Elektra Natchios jolts awake. 

Her first breaths sputter Matthew’s name as her eyes flicked open, burning at the world’s disarming light. Everything is too bright, and she expects Matthew’s countenance to appear, blotting out the sun, for he was the last thing she saw before she died the second time. She wants to grip him, to kiss him, to touch his flushed skin and taste his tears. In his years of knowing her, Matthew should have known better to weep for lost causes. Yet he wept all the same. In her dying moments, Elektra had loved him even more. She doesn’t know where he could have gone, but she remains unperturbed. She knows he’s alive. She would know of his death as surely as she knows her own.

Her consciousness sharpens like a knife ground against stone. Clarity in her thoughts offer solace to the overflow of sensory stimulation, like tell-tale New York smells and feeling in her appendages. Adjusting to living again was ruthless, but, like death itself, it was only temporary. After finding her bearings, Elektra wants to leap to her feet, but the heaviness in her limbs causes a struggle to roll on her back and prop onto her elbows. The heat of motion sends a shiver down her spine to contrast the cold pavement digging into her. It seeps through her clothing, a loose black shirt with matching pants that whispered against her skin. It doesn’t feel expensive, but Elektra thinks she may have imagined its murmuring.

The fatigue pooling into her body further unsettles her. As she fits in her skin, flexing her fingers, rolling her shoulders and kicking out her legs, the well of exhaustion cannot be depleted. She remembers her body after her last death. It was a fine-tuned machine of blood and sinew, with a rotten heart at her core. Her muscle memory hadn’t failed her, as she never allowed herself to grow tired in her former life. Like a father passes on a generational curse, Stick imbued Elektra with his tirelessness determination. She knows fatigue as not merely a condition, but as a mindset that leeched away one’s strength.

And of all the things she is, Elektra is never weak.

With a groan, she rises. She has no idea where she is, how she got here, or where are the clothes she died in. She almost stumbles before finding balance, toes curled into the hard pavement for purchase. She’s taller than she remembers. Another peculiarity: she doesn’t feel her long hair swing press against her back. Instead, it barely brushes against her shoulders. The texture is different too, not the luxurious silken strands Elektra groomed until they shined. Elektra touches it contemplatively, pushing it into her eyes for a better look.

This isn’t her hair. It’s perfectly brown and wavy, not black as night or straight. She rakes her fingers through her scalp, tugging to yank this god-awful wig off her head. A patch of hair bunches in her fist, freshly plucked, and her head prickles where she pulled. Elektra winces and discards the hair with a swipe of her wrist. Her fingers find her face, feeling youthful fullness instead of sharp angles. Before, she preened over her pronounced cheekbones and jawline. Now, that, like her strength and her hair, had been ripped away from her.

If she is not herself, this will be her cruelest penance.

She doesn’t want to prove herself right, but she needs to figure out if this is her body. In her past lives, she was in her own body. Having a body she couldn’t recognize in her reflection would erase her formative years with Stick. She would have to relearn his techniques, his agility, his cruelty. _Stick._ She’d have to find him. She would have to weaponize herself again, so that she could enact her revenge. Whoever did this, Elektra vows to hunt them down. Their fingers would go first, then palms, then tongues, and then eyes. The kill would be last, because Elektra was known for tormenting her victims before kill. Whatever damn _witchcraft_ they performed did nothing to change who she was at her core.

Elektra knew death, vengeance, and bloodlust, but rage was unfamiliar. She seldom felt rage, for whatever reason, resorting to steeling her jaw and remaining unflinching in the face of danger. Notwithstanding, as she scampered to a nearby puddle of water and leered at her unfamiliar reflection, she seethed. Like flowers blooming through skulls in old paintings, she felt embers of her rage throughout her body, licking her bones from under her skin. She hissed like a viper.

First, she must find Stick. She needed his help to snap this form back into taut sinew. Even if he was a futile ally, that old bastard would be her trail of breadcrumbs to Matthew. Matthew, on the other hand, may be even harder to convince, but surely, he’d empathize with Elektra being reincarnated into the _wrong body._ He was too good. He was so good that Elektra couldn’t wait to feed off of the light in his heart. She imagined him sinking into her darkness while she flung into the light, as she would be his and he would be hers again. Forever.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction that I've ever committed to, and I'm not sure how long it's going to be or how often it will be updated. I am writing as I go, and allowing the characters to organically guide how long this ends up being. Hopefully ao3 will let me edit rating/pairings/warnings because if not, the tags will grow outdated! I don't know what else to say, tbh, other thank you for reading and see you next chapter!


End file.
